Gambling Man

Gambling Man is a brilliant achievement of investigative reporting and narrative writing. The story of Mayoshi Son and Softbank's ambition and error across decades is fascinating in its own right and essential to an understanding of global tech and finance since the 1990s. With literary flair and stunning revelations, Lionel Barber delivers one of the very best biographies of a business titan to appear in years

Steve Coll, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Ghost Wars: the secret history of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden

Gambling Man is a pacy and highly professional telling of Son’s remarkable story, which skilfully draws out its broader historical themes

Felix Martin, Financial Times

A fascinating and richly reported insight into entrepreneurial excess and excitement, from Tokyo to Silicon Valley

Financial Times, Best Business Books of the Year

A rare insight into the life of Masayoshi Son, the mysterious Korean-Japanese tech investor who has made — and lost — more money than anyone else this century... Barber sets out Son’s extraordinary backstory, details all the deals, big and small, that Son did to enrich himself and [gives] a privileged boardroom-table view of the gilded age of tech-utopianism and borderless finance [with an] eye for colour [that] is more than enough to keep the everyday reader engaged

John Arlidge, Sunday Times

A sure-footed account ... Barber has a journalist's eye for his subject's telling idiosyncracies ... [his] detailed biography documents a career punctuaed with attention-grabbing successes and abrupt reversals

Henry Hitchings, Spectator

Barber has written a lively and detailed account of the rollercoaster life of Masayoshi Son, founder and head of the Japanese investment company SoftBank, which is quite some feat when you consider "Masa" (as he’s known to friends) is said to have made a fortune of $200 billion (€183.5 billion), and also spent $200 billion by betting big on technology ... a dashing book

Irish Times

Highly entertaining ... in writing Gambling Man, Barber has produced a definitive biography of this fascinating figure who seems to be everywhere yet is somehow strangely elusive. The author seems to have interviewed every important person in Son's life, from his father to the American professor who went "red with anger" when he recalled his dealings with a young Son in 1978. Barber's book also tells us a lot about the world we live in, how the intersection of technology and finance has created enormous fortunes and changed lifestyles everywhere

Peter Tasker, Nikkei Asia

How did Son rise to the heights of global wealth and power? And how did he acquire the self-confidence to bounce back from repeated meltdowns? Lionel Barber answers these questions in Gambling Man: The Wild Ride of Japan’s Masayoshi Son. It is not only a first-rate biography of an elusive billionaire; it is also, and just as intriguingly, an analysis of the recent age of tech-driven globalization from the unusual perspective of Japan

Adrian Wooldridge, Bloomberg

Like Ron Chernow on John D. Rockefeller, or Walter Isaacson on Steve Jobs, Lionel Barber has given us the defining account of an era in business history. Gambling Man confirms Barber's gift for brilliantly decoding the nuances of power. He dissects the layers of Masayoshi Son’s empire to reveal the anatomy of modern risk

Evan Osnos, National Book Award-winning author of Age of Ambition

Lionel Barber has written a fascinating book about Masa Son, one of the world’s most prolific investors and business builders. Masa’s story has the makings of an Ian Fleming novel. It’s hard to imagine someone like Masa has done more things than almost anyone you could imagine. Lionel cracked the code in helping us all understand this remarkable individual

Steve Schwarzman, co-founder of the Blackstone Group

Son deserves far wider recognition than has come his way, and Gambling Man is a parable that should be read by every would-be business empire builder

Martin Vander Weyer, Times Literary Supplement